Kyle Pitts: Career Stats, 2025 Breakout, and What Happens Next in Atlanta

Kyle Pitts — The Stats, the Slump, and the Season That Changed Everything

Born October 6, 2000 in Philadelphia, Kyle Pitts is a tight end for the Atlanta Falcons. He’s 6-foot-6, 250 pounds, wears number 8, and goes by “The Unicorn” — a nickname that made more sense in 2021 than it did for the next three years. The Falcons took him 4th overall in the 2021 NFL Draft, making him the highest-drafted tight end in NFL history. His rookie contract ran four years at $32.9 million. He’s now on a franchise tag worth $15.045 million for 2026, with a long-term extension still unresolved as of this writing.

Florida Gators: Three Seasons, One Historic Run

Pitts played three seasons at the University of Florida. His freshman year (2018) barely registered — three catches, 73 yards, one touchdown as a backup. His sophomore year was the first real signal: 54 receptions for 649 yards and five touchdowns across 13 games, which led all SEC tight ends and earned him First-Team All-Conference. Then came 2020.

The COVID-shortened season gave him only eight games. He scored 12 touchdowns and gained 770 yards on 43 catches — a 17.9-yard average that still makes you look twice. His 12 receiving touchdowns were the second-highest total by a tight end in SEC history, behind Vanderbilt’s Allama Matthews who scored 14 in 1982. He finished as a unanimous All-American, won the John Mackey Award (best tight end in college football), the CFPA Tight End Trophy, and was a Biletnikoff Award finalist. He finished in the top 10 of Heisman voting despite playing a position that almost never contends for that award. He left Florida as the program’s all-time leader in receiving yards by a tight end, finishing with 100 receptions, 1,492 yards, and 18 touchdowns in 32 career games.

Fourth Overall — and the History That Came With It

No tight end had ever been picked this high. To put it in context: Travis Kelce went in round 3 (pick 63) in 2013. Rob Gronkowski was a second-round pick (42nd overall) in 2010. George Kittle was a fifth-round pick in 2017. The Falcons passed on quarterbacks, edge rushers, and defensive cornerstones to take a tight end fourth overall. Their reasoning was that Pitts’ combination of size, route-running, and separation ability didn’t fit neatly into the tight end position — he was closer to a receiver who happened to align in the backfield. That argument was easy to make in April 2021. It got harder to make in 2022 and 2023.

Season-by-Season Numbers

Here’s the full picture:

Five seasons, one clear story: a stunning start, three years of diminishing returns, and then 2025. His career totals through the 2025 season stand at 284 receptions for 3,579 yards and 15 touchdowns across 78 games.

The Rookie Year That Set an Impossible Bar

In Week 7 of 2021, against the Miami Dolphins, Pitts caught seven passes for 163 yards. That single game set the Falcons’ franchise record for receiving yards in a game by a tight end. By Week 17, he’d passed 1,000 receiving yards — joining Pro Football Hall of Famer Mike Ditka, who did it with the Chicago Bears in 1961, as the only rookie tight ends in NFL history to hit that mark. He also surpassed Tony Gonzalez’s franchise record for the most receiving yards in a season by a tight end. His 1,026 yards in 2021 also broke Julio Jones’ record for the most receiving yards by any Falcon rookie, regardless of position.

One touchdown. He had one receiving touchdown all year, which is a strange footnote on what was otherwise a historic rookie campaign and something scouts and fantasy analysts pointed to as a usage concern from the start.

2022 to 2024: What Actually Went Wrong

The MCL tear in Week 11 of 2022 is the starting point for any honest account of his decline. He was placed on injured reserve the next day and finished with 356 yards in 10 games. That injury alone doesn’t explain 2023 and 2024, though.

Arthur Smith’s offense was run-first to an almost punishing degree. The quarterbacks behind center during those seasons — Marcus Mariota, Desmond Ridder, Taylor Heinicke — weren’t capable of exploiting a tight end with Pitts’ skill set even when the play calls were there. His yards per target in 2023 (7.7) and 2024 (8.1) were below what you’d expect from someone with his route-running ability, and his snap counts were inconsistent. He played all 17 games in both 2023 and 2024, which at least ruled out ongoing durability concerns, but his production in healthy seasons was hard to defend for a player drafted 4th overall.

By the end of 2024, he had 4 touchdowns on the season — a career high at the time, which illustrated where the bar had landed. RotoWire’s 2025 preview described his career arc directly: “He has consistently disappointed since setting expectations sky-high with 1,026 receiving yards as a rookie.” That was the consensus view going into 2025. It wasn’t wrong.

2025: The Season That Changed the Argument

Kirk Cousins arrived in Atlanta on a four-year contract and the offense changed immediately. Pitts saw 118 targets in 2025 — a career high, and a top-5 target share among all tight ends in the league. He finished with 88 receptions for 928 yards and five touchdowns, career highs across the board. When Drake London got hurt and missed time in the second half of the season, Pitts became the unambiguous first option in the passing game and played like one.

On December 11, 2025 — a Thursday Night Football game against Tampa Bay — he caught 11 passes for more than 150 yards and three touchdowns. That made him only the second player in NFL history to put up at least 10 receptions, 150 yards, and three or more receiving touchdowns in a Thursday Night Football game. He also recorded 110 yards and two scores in the first half alone, the first time in franchise history a tight end did that in a single half. His PFF receiving grade for the season was 82.0, ranking 6th among all qualified tight ends. He made his first All-Pro team (2nd team) and led all tight ends in receptions over 20 yards with 12.

At the end of the year, he secured the onside kick that sealed the Falcons’ Week 18 win over the Saints. Small detail. Telling moment.

Franchise Tag, $15 Million, and a July Deadline

The Falcons placed the franchise tag on Pitts in March 2026 rather than letting him hit free agency. He signed it in April — $15.045 million, fully guaranteed — and showed up for offseason workouts in Flowery Branch. Under the non-exclusive tag, both sides have until July 15, 2026 to negotiate a long-term extension. If they don’t reach one, he plays 2026 on the one-year deal.

Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer laid out the math on what a long-term deal would look like: two franchise tags added together (this year’s $15.045M plus next year’s projected tag at 120%, which comes to roughly $18.05M) totals about $33.1 million. Split in half and you get $16.55 million per year as a baseline. With a modest premium, Breer projected a four-year, $68 million extension with approximately $35 million fully guaranteed. That would put Pitts behind only George Kittle and Trey McBride at the position in average annual value.

The Falcons aren’t rushing. New GM Ian Cunningham has said all the right things about Pitts publicly — “we’re excited for his future” — while Ian Rapoport reported on Good Morning Football that the team has other priorities, including contracts for Bijan Robinson and Drake London. The cap situation makes the hesitation understandable: Kirk Cousins carries a $57.5 million cap number in 2026, and the Falcons’ effective cap space was under $11 million before signing their draft class. A $68 million extension for Pitts would have to be structured carefully around all of that.

What Kevin Stefanski Changes

New head coach Kevin Stefanski spent six years with the Minnesota Vikings (including as offensive coordinator in 2019) and then four seasons as head coach in Cleveland. His offenses consistently featured tight ends as central passing-game pieces — Kyle Rudolph in Minnesota, David Njoku in Cleveland. Njoku caught 81 passes for 882 yards under Stefanski in 2023. That’s a direct comparison point for what Pitts might be asked to do.

Stefanski runs a lot of 12-personnel (two tight ends on the field). The Falcons already have two other capable tight ends on the roster. That means Pitts could see significant usage as both an in-line blocker and a split receiver in a system designed to get tight ends involved — as opposed to the run-first structure under Arthur Smith, which treated tight ends primarily as blockers who occasionally ran routes.

Pitts vs. the Position — Where He Actually Ranks

Comparing his physical profile to what the position normally produces: at 6-foot-6 and 250 pounds, Pitts is larger than most wide receivers and faster than most tight ends. His 40-yard dash time at the 2021 combine was 4.44 seconds. The average NFL tight end runs somewhere between 4.6 and 4.7. That gap is real and it’s why he creates the matchup problems that made him worth a top-5 pick.

The honest case against him is that four seasons have passed since anyone seriously argued he was performing at a top-5 pick level. His 2025 season reopened that argument. Whether 2026 settles it depends on whether Cousins stays healthy, whether Stefanski’s scheme gets him targets in the right situations, and whether Pitts sustains a full season of that production without Drake London’s injury creating artificial opportunity. That’s three conditions, not one. Reasonable to be interested. Not quite time to assume.

Fantasy Football Outlook for 2026

Going into 2025, fantasy managers who had been burned three straight years were understandably skeptical of Pitts. He repaid anyone who held or bought in: 118 targets, 88 receptions, five touchdowns, and consistent weekly volume from roughly Week 8 onward. His finish as a top-5 fantasy tight end for the second half of the season was not a fluke — it was what Pitts with a functioning quarterback and a tight end-friendly coordinator actually looks like.

The concern for 2026 fantasy drafts is that Drake London is healthy again. In 2025, London’s absence in the back half of the season directly increased Pitts’ target share. With both healthy, Cousins has three legitimate options — London, Pitts, and Bijan Robinson — and the target distribution becomes less predictable. Pitts will likely finish 2026 somewhere between a high-end TE2 and a low-end TE1 depending on snap counts, injury luck, and whether the Falcons’ offense is efficient enough to support multiple high-volume pass catchers.

His ADP in early 2026 drafts reflects that uncertainty. He’s drafting behind the obvious tier-one options (Sam LaPorta, Trey McBride) and ahead of most of the field. That range feels about right. The upside is real. So is the dependency on a 38-year-old quarterback carrying a $57.5 million cap number.

The Short Version of Where Things Stand

Pitts is 25. He had the best season of his career in 2025 and the Falcons responded by keeping him on a one-year deal rather than committing long-term. That’s not a vote of no-confidence — it’s a cap-constrained franchise being careful. The July 15 deadline is when this gets resolved one way or another: extension, trade, or a prove-it 2026 season in Stefanski’s offense that could make him the most expensive tight end in the league by 2027.

He has until mid-July to find out which it is. So does Atlanta.